1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to immunology. More particularly the invention relates to the use of immunotherapy in combination with chemotherapy.
2. Summary of the Related Art
Despite the progress that modern medicine has made in treating cancer, cancer recurrence remains a concern. For a majority of cancers, typical treatment includes surgery followed by high doses of chemotherapy. A majority of these patients relapse and do not respond to other chemotherapeutic treatments. These patients then avail themselves to experimental or salvage treatments.
Current experimental regimens focus on mixing chemotherapies in an attempt to overcome resistance issues. Most of these treatments result in serious blood toxicities such as neutropenia, and thrombocytopenia. Other serious and frustrating symptoms to the patient include hair loss and nausea. Researchers are now looking at ways to enhance the immune system through less toxic means while still eliminating the cancer.
Many have turned to the use of chemotherapy in conjunction with antibody treatments. Many of these have also presented similar toxicities to the chemotherapy.
Thus, there remains a need to identify new treatments that not only treat the initial symptoms of a disease, but also alleviate and/or prevent recurrence of those symptoms.